Emet m'Tsiyon

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Why the New York Times Is Now a Yellow Journal, A Gutter Rag -- Gilead Ini Removes Its Pretentious Veil

It's now too obvious for any decent and intelligent person to deny. The New York Times is now a gutter rag, a yellow journal, full of sensationalism and lies and libels, happily distorting facts, omitting crucial facts and directly lying. The NYT habitually smears its designated enemies and, given the way Israel is treated in the Times, Israel must be its chief enemy.

This week began as the last one ended — with more Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israeli Jews, and more dead. And yet, this information might surprise readers of The New York Times.

On Sunday, a 20-year-old Israeli woman was stabbed to death, another Israeli was rammed by a car and attacked with a knife and a third was assaulted by a knife-wielding teen affiliated with the Islamic Jihad terror group.

All three assailants were killed in the course of their attacks.

But the headline to the Times’ story about Sunday’s attacks did away with cause and effect, muddled victim and aggressor: “1 Israeli, 3 Palestinians Killed in Attacks in West Bank.” The online headline was later changed, but the print headline Monday morning was equally obtuse: “West Bank Faces Spate of Assaults That Kill 4.” The “West Bank” faced nothing. It was Israelis who faced assaults.

This was par for the course — and in some ways, even mild — for how the Times has covered the so-called “stabbing intifada,” the recent spate of Arab-on-Jewish murder.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently called on his people to protect Jerusalem holy sites from the “filthy feet” of Israeli Jews [emphasis added], and terrorists have heeded the call, taking to the streets to thrust knives into any Israeli they encounter — other recent stabbing victims include an 80-year-old woman and a 13-year-old boy on a bike [two female Arab terrorists attacked an Arab man in his seventies whom they mistook for a Jew--Eliyahu].

But even this incitement, and even this terror, is no match for the creativity of The New York Times. When a Palestinian assailant was caught on film last month wielding a knife and rushing at Israelis, before quickly being neutralized by Israeli security personnel, Times reporters simply avoided telling readers about the video.

And instead of mentioning this incriminating piece of evidence, they repeatedly cited false Palestinian allegations that Israelis planted the knife next to the “innocent” attacker. Creatively, and unethically, they turned an empirical fact into an unknowable case of police vs. “witness.”

When Israel released a photo of the butterfly knife held by the attacker, the Times’ bureau chief in Jerusalem absurdly called it a “Boy Scout” knife. Again, it was a masterstroke of creativity. Butterfly knives are infamous for being flipped back and forth by ’80s movie villains, and are illegal in several US states and in countries around the world. To confuse a butterfly knife with a Boy Scout knife is to confuse nunchucks with a nun’s ruler.

Similarly, after Palestinians stoned a Jewish car, resulting in the death of the driver, a reporter insisted they weren’t attacking the Israeli but merely pelting “the road he was driving on.” The death, reporters insisted, was an “accident.” Attacking the asphalt? A Boy Scout knife? Such verbal ingenuity might be commendable in creative writing. In journalism, it’s an embarrassment.

And so was the newspaper’s recent suggestion that there might never have been a temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, despite unanimity among serious scholars to the contrary. [Read more here]. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Gilead Ini shows some of the tricks that the Times uses: avoiding or deemphasizing facts that don't fit the pro-PLO/PA narrative, distorting little facts, direct lies little and big, omitting crucial facts that don't fit the narrative, and so on. You do remember that the NYT's motto is: All the news that's fit to print. What is not fit to print is what does not fit the narrative, the sob story that the Palestinian Arab leadership and their Western psywar, cogwar, and PR advisors have concocted to make the Palestinian Arabs look innocent and put upon by those inherently mean Jews or Zionists. The Times even put words into the mouth of a famous public figure, the pope, so as to support the usual NYT pro- Arab, pro-PLO/PA prejudice. And we can go on.

Meanwhile, see these two previous posts on Emet m'Tsiyon, here and here. These posts both deal with the NYT falsifying what the pope said to PLO/PA chief Mahmud Abbas (his nom de guerre is Abu Mazen). They somewhat changed their story when several sites on the Web --including yours truly-- pointed out their error. And they made a half-way, insincere apology for their deliberate lie. It is foolish to see the Times as a reliable news site. It is worse than unreliable. It is a gutter journal, full of hatred and venom, and false, hypocritical morality.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Hypocritical Euro Judeophobes Strike Israel Again

Israel has many friends in Europe, but they are not making policy for that monstruous, undemocratic and anti-democratic institution, the European Union, loathed by many of its own people, by perhaps a majority of those in countries where the insane Euro currency has been installed. This currency, a bad idea whose time had come, has caused economic suffering in countries like Italy, Greece, France, Portugal and Spain, in some cases ruining the local economy.

Back to Europe's traditional hatred of Jews. Judeophobic European elites have found a clever, exceedingly hypocritical way to continue to justify hating Jews after the Holocaust and to justify murderous attacks against them. They invented the never existent "palestinian people" presented as innocent of any prior offense against Jews and also presented as indigenous to what Westerners choose to now call "palestine." However, the Romans who founded European civilization such as it is, called the country Judea --IVDAEA in proper Latin writing. The words Jew and Juif and Jude and judio etc derive from that name Judea.

The EU is now out of the closet of its Jew hatred. It is quite open now. The EU is imposing a trade sanction on Israel because Israel is supposedly occupying territory belonging to "Palestinians," this previously non-existent people [up till 1964 when the PLO was founded.] This group of Arabs live or formerly lived in the Land of Israel [called Judea by the Romans, you recall]. But occupying territory does not really bother the EU as a whole. After all, one of the smaller and less influential EU members, Cyprus, is suffering the occupation of about 38% of its land mass by Turkey, which Turkey calls the The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

This occupation of part of an EU member state does not much bother the true blue Euros. If it did they would vociferously denounce this occupation and send enraged Scandinavian morality enforcers to tell the Turks that they are doing wrong things. Of course Cyprus and Greece make noise about the occupation of northern Cyprus from time to time. But the bulk of the EU could not care less. Indeed, the EU provides funds for northern Cyprus for the benefit of the Turkish Cypriots who collaborate and support the Turkish occupation and have taken over homes and lands formerly inhabited by Greek Cypriots. Likewise, the EU collaborates with the occupation of western Sahara by Morocco[& here & here & here].

At long last, the European Commission has published its long-threatened Interpretive Notice on labeling Israeli “settlement” products. Until its publication on November 11, Israeli sources had feared the anticipated Notice would impose trade sanctions and illegally discriminate against the Jewish state, but the Europeans jealously guarded the Notice’s secrecy.

The Notice is now out, and Israel’s worst fears have been realized. It does impose a form of trade sanction against the Jewish state—one that violates international law and discriminates against the Jewish state. It is also badly reasoned and badly drafted, and drips with condescension and contempt for Israel.

The Notice says that when products from the Golan Heights, “East” Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza are sold in Europe, they must not be labeled as “products of Israel” because the EU believes that these areas are not sovereign parts of Israel under international law and, therefore, consumers would be misled if they were labeled “products of Israel.” However, the Notice states that it would be lawful to label products from the West Bank and Gaza as “products of Palestine” (and maybe from “East” Jerusalem as well, though the Notice is ambiguous on this point) even though the EU does not recognize the sovereignty of a state of Palestine. This is because presumably European consumers only care that product labels reflect EU views of sovereignty under international law when this works to the disadvantage of Israel.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Notice presents its position on the borders between Israel and a future state of Palestine as those of “international law” as if the EU had the authority under international law to establish Israeli-Palestinian borders. In fact, not only does the EU lack this authority under international law, the EU is signed as a witness on Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements that state that the borders are to be established only by agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Similarly, the Notice claims that the EU “will not recognise any changes to pre-1967 borders, other than those agreed by the parties to the Middle East Peace Process” even though there were no pre-1967 Israeli-Palestinian borders. In fact, by trying to establish the pre-1967 Israel-Jordan and Israel-Egypt armistice lines as the new Israeli-Palestinian borders, the EU is trying to force changes to the pre-1967 borders contrary to the agreement of the parties to the peace process. Ironically, the EU is trying to rewrite history as well, since there is no country in the EU that viewed the armistice lines as borders pre-1967.

. . . . . . . . . . .

There is an important conclusion to draw from the European Notice.

Until it is forced to stop, the European Union will continue to violate international law as it concerns Israel. The European Notice is a clear violation of international trade law (for more analysis, see a report authored by Eugene Kontorovich and me). And this is not the only way the EU or European states violate international law to harm Israel. European states have long ignored their legal duties to combat terrorism under treaties like the International Convention to Suppress the Financing of Terrorism and Security Council resolutions like Resolution 1373 when it comes to terrorist organizations that target Israeli and other Jews. Most European states continue to contribute to the second-class treatment of the Jewish state in the UN system, in violation of article 2(1) of the UN Charter. More generally, the EU and European states have devoted enormous efforts to creating double standards under cover of international law that are uniquely harsh to the Jewish state.

A series of recent and pending European Union decisions have led some to suggest the EU is developing a policy of “differentiation” between Israel and the territories that came under its control under 1967.[2] However, the EU’s actions must be seen in a broader perspective, which includes its treaty and trade relations with other countries that it regards as occupying territory, such as Morocco, Turkey, Armenia, and Russia.[3] As the same time that the EU has been “differentiating” Israeli settlements, it has failed to pursue “differentiation” anywhere else, and in some places even pursued the diametrically opposite policy, which we might call “homogenization.” Thus the EU’s “differentiation” of Israel may properly refer to differentiating its treatment of Israel from other relevant contexts.

This paper will examine the differences in the EU’s treatment of Israel from other situations involving claims of occupation and illegal settlement.[4] It will then consider the implications of such differences under international trade law, which broadly discourages discriminatory measures.

[3] For more background on EU practice up until 2010, see Guy Harpaz & Eyal Rubinson, The Interface between Trade, Law and Politics and the Erosion of Normative Power Europe: Comment on Brita, 35 European L. Rev. 551-571 (2010).

[4] The inconsistency between EU policy with regard the West Bank and Western Sahara has recently been noted in the EU’s own publications. See Pai Wrange, Occupation and Annexation of Territory: Respect for International humanitarian and human rights and consistent EU policy, Directorate for External Policy, Policy Department Study 44-45, 51 (2015).

About

The world swims in lies. Who doesn't know that? Even the dupes are told there are lies about. We aim to dispel the fog of lies, especially about Israel, like our prophets of old and our poets like Yehudah haLevi.
We feature historic sources, documents, excerpts from the classics, etc.
How shall I render my vows and my bonds, While yet
Zion lieth beneath the fetter of Edom, and I in Arab chains?
The false prophets cry Peace, and there is no peace.
A new post every 2 or 3 days.

About Me

צלום דבורה בת יהודה לייב ז''ל
Dvoyreh bas Yehudah Leyb, Eliyahu's mother. My own photo will have to await more peaceful times.
I have been an observer of
the human comedy, and the human tragedy for many years.